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Diesel founder Renzo Rosso has built a clothing empire.
The "hard-partying, trash-talking billionaire bad boy," as W Magazine called him, went from son of a northern Italian farmer to amassing a small fortune. He refers to himself as "crazy" for his outsized creativity and vision, according to Women's Wear Daily.
He first appeared on the Forbes billionaires list in 2012, and he currently has a net worth of roughly $3.4 billion, which he acquired through provocative advertising, savvy retail acumen, and smart business sense.
Though he's since relinquished the reigns of the company he created, the 60-year-old still serves as president of its holding company, OTB (which stands for Only The Brave, a company motto), and it doesn't seem like he'll slow down any time soon.
Rosso sat down with Business Insider to give us a small peek into what his fabulous life is really like.
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Rosso was born in 1955 in the tiny northern Italian town of Brugine, the son of a farmer.
According to an anecdote he recounted to W Magazine, he was once given rice pudding by a group of American soldiers from a nearby army base. "That, for me, was the American Dream," he said.
Source: W Magazine
With that drive, he made his first pair of jeans. It was the '70s, and they had a 42-centimeter leg opening. "My friends were so much in love with these jeans, that they started [asking for them]," Rosso told us.
That first pair spurred him to buy a 40% stake in the company he worked for, Moltex, with money he borrowed from his father in 1978. This company then became Diesel.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider